SPEECH-INTELLIGIBILITY OF CHILDREN WITH MULTICHANNEL COCHLEAR IMPLANTS

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to document improvements in speech intelligibility in children who have received multichannel coch lear implants, to compare their performance to that of a matched group of children with different levels of hearing loss who use conventiona l hearing aids. Speech intelligibility was measured by panels of liste ners who analyzed recorded speech samples preimplant and at 6-month in tervals following implantation. The results of this study demonstrate that prelingually deafened children with the Nucleus multichannel coch lear implant achieved significant improvements in speech intelligibili ty. By the 4.5- to 7.5-year intervals, the speech intelligibility exce eded 40%.